


any day, every time, until darkness comes and we are still breathing

by inwardphae



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-10 00:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18649000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inwardphae/pseuds/inwardphae
Summary: Post-Endgame light angst with a much deserved happy ending (or: how it should have been)Obviously, Endgame Spoilers!_________________________________________________________________________________________"And then it dawned on me. That that picture, the picture on her desk, wasn’t there to remind her of a life she missed on. It was there to remind her of a life she once wanted but that could never had brought her where she was now, in that office, building SHIELD. And she loved me, of course she did, and I loved her. She kept loving me, but not with regret and anguish, she kept loving me like one loves the things that life gave’em  but now are gone because they needed to be."





	any day, every time, until darkness comes and we are still breathing

**Author's Note:**

> I came out of Endgame completely and utterly destroyed, **[here](https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/44158117?page=2&show_comments=true&view_full_work=false#comments)** my thoughts on Steve and Steve and Bucky's conclusion in the movie, for those interested.
> 
>  
> 
> I am planning a much longer fic, but for the moment here's this fix-it cause I needed it more than air. Hopefully you'll like it (and please, I'm not a native speaker so if you notice anything please let me know! It'd be much appreciated!).
> 
>  
> 
> For the maximum level of softness and light angst, listening to [**It's Been a Long, Long Time**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYvONFHI2xw) by Harry James is highly recommended.

“I’m gonna miss you, buddy”

Bucky hears himself say the words and the paralysing pain he feels is so huge, the effort to sustain it so titanic that he almost breaks down right there in front of him. He suddenly feels as if someone pulled him out of his own body, as if those feelings weren’t his, almost like in a dream, as if everything that happened in the past five years (five seconds, seven decades, a lifetime) didn’t belong to him but was simply one of those scenes of everyday life that sometimes people would paint into those crystal balls when it’s Christmas, those that one can shake to make it snow and everything is even more beautiful.

Bucky is shaking. But Steve is leaving, and he doesn’t feel beautiful. He doesn’t feel enough. He would have given Steve his whole life -hell, he did, but it isn’t enough.

“It’s gonna be okay, Buck”

And that’s it. The end of the line, just like that. Bucky knows Steve will miss him too, because Steve has always loved him. Just, not in the right way. Just, not in any way that counts. And Bucky knows that Steve will never say those words, because saying them would make’em real and he doesn’t think that either of them could stand it right now. He certainly can’t. And he has been preparing himself for this moment since he was13 years old and realized that he was in love with his best friend, he has been preparing himself for the moment that someone finally noticed how much brighter Steve was than the sun, and he would have let him go. He had always noticed, it just took someone else to find out. And now, it’s time. Hell, it’s been overdue for 70 years. Now, Steve has time, the fight is done. He’s got all the time in the world.

Bucky watches Steve disappears and wonders if every step he took in his life, every restless night spent at Steve’s bedside, watching over his sick body, if every extra shift at the docks, every penny he managed to tuck away and spend on something  _good_ for once, every time the finger on the trigger didn’t tremble, every time he felt so lost and scared and yet didn’t give up… he wonders if every single breath of air in his lungs had been leading to this. To the emptiness. Bucky’s so empty that he doesn’t even feel like crying.

He is not even sure he can feel anymore.

And just like that, Steve’s gone. Bucky perceives distinctively Sam putting a hand on his shoulder and saying, “Are you alright, buddy?”. He asks himself when it happened that they got close. If it’s fair that it had to happen over Steve’s disappearance.

Bucky closes his eyes and counts, slowly. When the countdown ends, he doesn’t need to open them to know that Steve’s not there. That he never will be.

“Bruce? Where-where did he go?” he hears Sam asking, his voice trembling like he’s not so sure what happened or what went wrong. How could he, after all.

“I-I don’t know, he must have missed his window…it should have been 5 seconds, I…”

“Barnes? What the fuck? What do we do?” Sam turns to Bucky with the look of a man who’s still trying to have a grasp of reality and is not sure of what he’s doing.

Bucky breaths very deeply, trying to keep his voice from trembling.

“Nothing, Sam. There’s nothing to do”

“What do you mean nothing? He must be stuck there, he might need our help, there must be something we can do!”

“He doesn’t need us, Sam. He chose. He chose to live his life”

 _He chose her_ , Bucky doesn’t say.

Sam looks at him, speechless, so he feels the need to add “He’s gonna be here soon enough, Sam, don’t worry. He promised to come back”.

And, in fact, there he is. He notices him before anybody else, yet another confirmation of what he’s been able to do his whole life, of what he does best: finding Steve wherever he is. Even if it seems that Bucky can’t really follow him anymore.

Bucky sees the moment that Sam follows his gaze and realizes what happened. Steve’s sitting on a bench, and Bucky can’t see anything but his back, a bit curved but otherwise the same. He tries to imagine what his face must look like. It’s always been a private dream of his, growing old with Steve, their ages matching as their lives did, from the beginning to the very end.

But despite Bucky’s years, despite the fact that he’s so awfully tired -has been for years-, he supposes they don’t quite much anymore.

Sam goes on first, and Bucky sees them exchanging words. Sam doesn’t look shocked, and he still can’t see Steve’s face, but he supposes that it must be less of a shock than Bucky thought. He must have underestimated Sam. How is that everyone is so ready to see Steve grow old, be selfish and live his life? Bucky wasn’t, isn’t, despite having spent the first 20 years of his life hoping that Steve could stop being so selfless every now and then.

Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.

Sam’s coming back, almost retreating, shield in hand that he’s sort of holding it towards Bucky as if he isn’t so sure, as if he wanted to ask if it’s alright. It is. Bucky doesn’t need it. Bucky doesn’t want it, he never wanted it, not for Steve and not for himself. And yet.

Life is a funny thing.

The look Sam gives him is sort of in between  _it’s your turn now, pal_  and  _I’m not sure what happens now, guess we’ll see._ So Bucky braces himself, and walks to the bench.

And what he finds, he could never have expected. Not in a million years.

He looks at Steve like he did thousands of times in their lives and at the same time he looks at him like it’s the first, and Bucky cannot really believe what he’s seeing. Cannot really believe that his eyes are not betraying him. Because there, in front of him, older still but very much  _young_ and _alive_  and  _beautiful_  like he was when they were eighteen years old in Brooklyn and felt like the whole world was at their fingertips, there Steve is.

Looking at him. Looking  _back_. Like he is really seeing him. Like he means it.

He’s older. His eyes have little creases at the corners that Bucky touches reverently with the fingertips of his flesh hand, he looks a bit softer, his hair longer, his smile more morbid. But it’s Steve. Steve that cannot be more than 5 years older than when he left, a lifetime and only ten minutes ago. But 5 years is not a life time.  _He shouldn’t be here_

“Stevie…” whispers Bucky, disbelieving. Steve motions for him to sit down, and he does. He’s not sure he knows how to formulate words anymore. His brain doesn’t seem to function and his heart cannot stop beating so quickly that he thinks he might pass out and maybe he should, because this is not real, cannot be real, cannot be real  _oh God please please make it real please please make it real oh God please please make it that he came back to me, make it that he never left._

And he must have said it out loud, because Steve looks at him and sees his red-rimmed eyes and moves him closer, a hand firmly put on Bucky’s neck, their foreheads touching. When he speaks, it’s as feeble as the wind.

“I’m here, Buck. I’m here, I’m real, I’m real”

“Steve”

“Bucky”

“ _Steve,_ Steve, you shouldn’t be here _”_

It’s Steve’s turn to look at him with eyes so huge that Bucky feels like he’s melting under his gaze. He doesn’t understand.

“I am exactly where I need to be”

“But… but Peggy”

There, he said it. And God knows he never voiced out loud all his pain and fear and misery, all enclosed in that one name that took everything away from him. And yet, he never managed to hate her. He always liked Peggy, to be perfectly honest. She was all that he couldn’t be, she had all that he could never give to Steve. And yet.

Life is a funny thing.

“We need to talk. Can we?” Steve asks, holding Bucky’s hand and without giving any sign of wanting to let go. Bucky only nods. He doesn’t know if he wants to understand, but he needs to.

Steve gives him an encouraging smile, and Bucky feels like the sun is shining again after a lifetime of darkness. He doesn’t want to let go.

“I went back. That much was easy. Or, I guess, as easy as these things can go. I put the stones back where they needed to be, but then… I saw her again, Buck. I saw her again in her office, talking with Howard, and she was older and her hair had bits of grey like ours would have been, Buck, if we had lived our life like it was intended. She had this big framed picture of me on her desk -do you remember? Me like I was  _before._ I couldn’t understand why someone would have wanted  _that_ me framed on their desk”

Bucky huffs at that. Steve had always been beautiful; he would have taken him in any way he could have had him.

“When I saw that, I thought…I thought, “I need to talk to her, I need to have that dance”. And so I went back, it might have been ’46, ’47, I’m not sure. I’d never seen that time before, after all. She was in Brooklyn, weird enough…I always thought she would go back to England, or maybe move to DC if she had to stay in the States. But no, it was Brooklyn, and I looked at her through her window and Billie Holiday was playing.”

Steve takes a big breath after that, his grip on Bucky’s hand tightens, and Bucky braces himself for the inevitable.

“I knocked. And when she answered… well, you remember Peggy, she’s always been nothing but extraordinary. I tried to explain what I could, I tried to explain who I was, that I wasn’t her Steve”

Bucky’s on the verge of tears and he doesn’t even care anymore. He never thought that Steve could be so cruel, that he would have to listen to his friend’s dream coming true without him at his side.

“But you could have been” he forces himself to say.

“I could have, yeah. Anyways, she understood what she could.”

“She’s always been a smart gal” says Bucky. Because that much is true. He owes it to Peggy’s memory. Even if the knot on his stomach keeps tightening and tightening and he feels like he cannot breathe. He had always imagined them together; he doesn’t know if he can bear to live it through Steve’s words as well.

“My best girl. We had that dance, and it was as it should have been. She was there and real and… and I cannot lie to you and say that I didn’t think of… staying”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I almost did. She was there and it felt so real, but… but it wasn’t. And then it dawned on me. That that picture, the picture on her desk, wasn’t there to remind her of a life she missed on. It was there to remind her of a life she once wanted but that could never had brought her where she was now, in that office, building SHIELD. And she loved me, of course she did, and I loved her. She kept loving me, but not with regret and anguish, she kept loving me like one loves the things that life gave’em  but now are gone because they needed to be. We had our dance, in the end”

“And?”

Bucky starts to see where things are going but he doesn’t dare,  _he doesn’t dare…_

“And, it was enough. It was right, but she moved on. And in some way, I think we both did. It was time”

“But…” Something’s not right, there’s something that Steve’s omitting.

“Yeah?”

“But you stayed away longer than that, Steve. I can see it. It’s a good look on you, but it’s been… it’s been years, it must have been”

“Yeah. That’s the other thing. It was 1947 Buck, and you were…”

“What about me, Steve? I… I don’t know what to say, I…”

And then it dawned on him. Steve could see the moment Bucky understood. His blue eyes impossibly wide, his heart beating so fast that he almost worried it wouldn’t keep up. The shadows behind his eyes came back for a moment, and so did the straight, solid posture of the Winter Soldier and it was… it was terrifying, in its own way. But then, Bucky’s features softened again, and he bit his lower lip in a way that was all Bucky Barnes and nothing less, nothing more.

“I was with them. Wasn’t I? Steve, you didn’t…”

“I had to, Buck! You couldn’t really expect me not to do anything, the one time that I could actually make a difference!”

“It wasn’t your fault, Steve, we went through that”

“I know. But I didn’t come back for you, and I should have. I couldn’t leave you with Hydra, I couldn’t let you go through all of that again. That’s why it took so long, I… I gave Peggy the coordinates of the Valkyrie and she went to get me. Well, the other me, at least. And I went to Siberia with the Commandos. We had to save you, we had to… please, please Bucky, I’m sorry it took so long but I couldn’t… I couldn’t stand it, not again, not again”

Bucky sees the moment Steve loses it, sees his eyes filling with tears and seventy years of guilt coming back to amend for a mistake that he didn’t make. And, as always, as it had always been, the exact moment that Steve Rogers is in pain… Bucky has to be there for him. It’s how things work, it’s a part of his being, of his soul. There is nothing that he could do, nothing that he  _would_  do to change it.

Bucky gets hold of Steve, kissing the soft hair tickling Bucky’s chin, hugging him so tightly that it hurts, but it doesn’t matter,

“He… he wasn’t really you, I know that” says Steve after a moment, sniffing a bit. “It wasn’t really you, but Bucky, there’s no universe, no alternative timeline in this world or in the next where I would consciously leave you behind, you hear me? Never, never, never again”

Bucky takes a deep breath, still stroking Steve’s hair. He needs to say it, he is done shutting things up until he is so full of lies that he could explode.

“I was afraid you would this time, you know”

Steve abruptly moves away at that, trying to look at him in the eyes. Bucky averts his gaze.

“I wasn’t mad or anything… I just thought ‘it’s time’, you know? I just thought you deserved to be happy, and that you came back for me enough times. You deserved a happy ending, and if I wasn’t the one you wanted to have it with then it would have been alright. I’ve always wanted what was best for you, and with her you would have been happy”

“Maybe once, Buck, but now… I loved her. I still do, believe me, I do. But I loved you all my life and… I don’t know, it just is. I will always choose you in the end, always”

“I would have been okay with it if you stayed, you know that, right?”

“But how could you? How could you ever forgive me, if that was the case? And then, and then what? I would simply have lived my life there, without you? After a lifetime trying to find you again how could I have stayed without you? A-and… and coming back as an old man, afterwards?”

And then, something in Steve snapped.

“Wait. Wait, Bucky, you… when I left, when you said you would have missed me, your really thought that… you really thought I was abandoning you?”

Bucky stays silent for a moment, then says “You would have been here, though. You would have come back anyway. At some point”.

“Yeah” says Steve, angrily this time. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t have been really here, would I? No more shared life experiences, I would have been a different person, and so would you. It wasn’t right Buck, it just wasn’t. How could you think I would…”

It was Buck’s anger to explode this time, such a sudden wave of rage that it took him by surprise and he wasn’t sure how to control it.

“What do you want me to say, Steve? You want me to say that I loved you since I can remember, that I loved you when I didn’t even know what love was? That I’m so used to lying and shutting everything down and pretending that my days and nights have always clocked around the beating of your heart, that I don’t even know how to do it any other way? That I would have taken everything,  _anything_  that you gave me?” A sob interrups his words when Steve tries to cup his face in his hands. Bucky puts his own over Steve’s, and keeps them there.

“I still do, Steve… I-I’m so pathetic, but god knows that I’ll still take anything. Anything”

Steve looks at him in the eyes and sweeps his tears away with his thumb.

“I’ll give you everything now, Bucky, if you let me. Will you?”

And it doesn’t feel real but it is, and Bucky feels like he is bursting, consummated by his joy and endless relief. He puts his head in the hollow of Steve’s neck and breathes him in, nuzzling a bit. He fits so perfectly in the space that he has carved out for himself that he wonders how on hearth did he spend a hundred years without doing it.

Steve smiles. Bucky can’t see it, but he can feel it against his skin, in the warmth of the body against his own.

 _“It’s been a long, long time…”_  Steve whispers slowly, half talking, half singing so sweetly that Bucky feels that he can’t take it anymore. He lifts his head, lets his lips slowly oh so slowly brush up against Steve’s, and then…

And then. Someone would say that it’s never the same, never again, once you’ve tried what it’s like. With the right person. With the one. “This is it, this is it. He is it” thinks Bucky, and then stops thinking entirely ‘cause his mouth is on Steve’s and he is so warm and beautiful and  _there_ , incredibly there with him that the overwhelming joy and seventy-year-old desire simply take over. And it’s everything.

Bucky lets his mouth open a bit and he feels like he is fourteen again in Brooklyn and it’s his first kiss, as if he never kissed someone else before in his life -and in a way it is, it is a first-, and then he feels Steve’s tongue and he is inside Steve and  _Steve is inside him_  and Steve’s fingers in his hair and it’s true, so true. They are doing and it’s them, it’s them for real.

And in the end, it was worth it. It was worth the extra shifts at the docks, it was worth that time that Bucky had to sell the medal of honour that had been with his family for generations -the one that his pa used to shine all the time when he was a kid and Bucky couldn’t really understand why- to pay the doctor’s bills. It was worth the wait, the restless nights spent in the same bed so that Steve wouldn’t get cold, it was worth the pain and the despair every time Hydra tried to break him and couldn’t, and it was worth the resignation and the endless pain when they did. It was worth his memories, all of them, it was worth Becca’s smile and his mother’s soft embrace. It was worth anything Bucky had to give and then some. Anything. Everything.

 “Steve?” Bucky says slowly, after having reluctantly pulled away.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“What happened to the other me? And you?”

“They went back to Brooklyn, they went home”

Bucky smiles at that. He can see it: Steve and him, in their old apartment, at not even thirty years old and the whole world in front of them, trying to fit back in their old life. Bucky missing an arm and with more nightmares than he could count, Steve trying to re-learn his life with 150 pounds more and a body that still feels awkward from time to time, and a fear of the cold that he never had before. It is scary, in a way. But with their army pension they would move to a new place, a bit bigger but not too much, with lots of light so that Steve could draw, and they would buy a new bed where they could both fit together. And they would go to Coney Island on the 4th of July, Bucky would see his ma again, and they would be there for Peggy’s wedding and for the birth of Becca’s first child, and Steve would look at him from the corner of the room and smile that warm smile of his. And they would grow old together.

Bucky smiles so softly and all of a sudden when he realises that they can still do it. That last thing it’s still theirs. In every universe, it doesn’t matter the time or the space, they still have that. Bucky holds on to that certainty with all his strength.

“Stevie?”

“Yeah?”

“I think they’ll be alright”

“Yeah Buck, they will”.

 

_Fin_


End file.
